FCC Buckles to Big Cable, Adopts Watered-Down VoIP Outage Rules

The Federal Communications Commission has ruled that VoIP service providers will have to report major service outages to the FCC, but, in a loophole that benefits only major broadband internet service providers who also offer IP phone service, cable and DSL providers will not be required to report broader outages of the actual Internet connectivity crucial to VoIP service.

The ruling is an effort to bring VoIP services in line with the outage reporting required of legacy circuit-switched voice services.

The FCC estimates that nearly a third of broadband-enabled homes depend on “interconnected” VoIP providers, which it defines as companies that offer voice services over broadband connections to and from the public switched telephone network (PSTN) and require the use a VoIP adapter or IP phone on the customer premises. Services such as Skype and Google Voice do not depend on VoIP adaptors and are exempt from the ruling.

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski had originally proposed that providers of internet connectivity services (such as Comcast and AT&T) be required to report general internet outages, but The National Cable & Telecommunications Association (NCTA), which represents the major US cable and telecommunications providers, lobbied to limit reporting requirements to VoIP service.

Commissioner Robert McDowell, an FCC member originally appointed in 2006 by then President George Bush and reappointed by President Barack Obama in 2009, led the effort to water down the reporting requirement, arguing that the scope of the reporting should pertain only to outages that affect emergency 911 services and that the FCC has little jurisdiction over internet services. After Genachowski agreed to narrow their scope, the commission voted unanimously to adopt the new reporting requirements

AT&T, which provides both broadband internet and VoIP services, welcomed the decision. “We are pleased that the Commission was willing to work with us to focus on rules that give the agency visibility into outages that affect 911 service for Voice over IP subscribers,” said Bob Quinn, AT&T Senior Vice President of Federal Regulatory and Chief Privacy Officer. “We look forward to continuing to work with the FCC to ensure that its regulations are narrowly tailored to achieve their stated goal of protecting consumers.”

But VoIP providers relying on external internet service providers are disappointed that internet outages are exempt from the reporting rules.

“We are fine with outage reporting rules that protect the consumer,” said Ravi Sakaria, CEO of VoicePulse, a major independent VoIP service provider. “But if the FCC’s goal is to equalize the requirements between PSTN and IP voice services, this ruling doesn’t do it”

“It’s a paradigm shift, the transport layer is being separated from the application layer,” said Sakaria of Wednesday’s ruling. “To an interconnected VoIP provider, internet service is as vital as copper is to a PSTN carrier. But the FCC has never separated phone service from the copper wiring on which it’s delivered.”

Consumer advocacy groups are also not convinced. Public Knowledge, a Washington, D.C.-based group that advocates on behalf of consumers in copyright, telecommunications and internet law, welcomed the ruling, but expressed disappointment it did not go far enough.

“We are disappointed that this data, as with other reported outage information, will not be made public,” said Harold Field, legal director of Public Knowledge, on the group’s web site. “As we said in our comments filed with the Open Technology Initiative last fall, the reporting burden will be minimal on VoIP providers.”

Hats off to the FCC for taking a step toward providing reliable communication. Still, they’re not done playing catch up to regulate people once the failure or outage has already occurred. The best way to handle this is to go through a provider who can do this work for you. If they can prove that they don’t do the shady LCR stuff to sacrifice the quality of your call, you are much more likely to NOT have your call fail. This blog post from 2600hz goes into it in a bit more detail about what LCR is:

So, first FCC made sure that all VoIP must provide 911 service (and introduced E911 fee). Now, they need to report if 911 service had an outage. Just another pointless regulation from useless agency.

And how was Google able to weasel out from all this? It offers voice services over broadband connections to and from the public switched telephone network (PSTN) and requires the use a VoIP adapter or IP phone on the customer premises – just like everybody else. It doesn’t *require* adapter – but neither does PhonePower and, I am sure, many other VoIP providers. I say, good for Google – but why can’t other providers offer softphone and make E911 optional?